Category: Computers, Internet & Technology

Keeping track of all those books

If you have a Mac, Delicious Library is terrific software for cataloging your books, videos, music and games.

Get your Mac, a webcam, and Delicious Library and rediscover your home library. Just point any FireWire digital video camera, like an Apple iSight®, at the barcode on the back of any book, movie, music, or video game. Delicious Library does the rest. The barcode is scanned and within seconds the item’s cover appears on your digital shelves filled with tons of in-depth information downloaded from one of six different web sources from around the world.

Delicious Library

If you don’t have a camera, you can use the keyboard to enter the UPC.

It’s $40, but truly well-designed software and fun to use. A major upgrade is due out very soon for Leopard, but it will be a free upgrade for anyone who buys now. In the meanwhile, download it and play with the demo.

Click image for larger version.

When Apple’s Keynote Bounce Is a Thump

NewMexiKen treats much investing like I used to treat running — I like reading about it.

Anyway, I thought this from an article at Business Week was interesting.

Apple’s stock has been a huge wealth-generation machine over the last few years. If you had bought it five years ago when shares were worth about 7.50 on a split-adjusted basis, and held it until now, you’d be staring at a gain of more than 2,000% over five years. But that’s called investing. By contrast, betting on a short-term gain from a Steve Jobs keynote at Macworld has always been fraught with peril.

Yes, on the surface it might seem a good bet. Going back to 1999, Apple’s stock price has gained an average of 4.7% on the day of a Jobs keynote at the January edition of Macworld. But of those 10 occasions, only half have seen the stock rise, the biggest gain coming with last year’s unveiling of the iPhone. Developed in the strictest secrecy, the phone was widely expected to make its public debut that day. But with so little known about the device before it was revealed, iPhone mania pushed the stock up more than 8% that day.

But a one-day pop like that can create unreasonable expectations. In fact, if you exclude the iPhone spike from consideration, Apple’s stock price has dropped an average of 3.6% on keynote day since 1999.

For the record, Apple stock was down about 10% Tuesday and Wednesday to $159.64. It’s high late in December was around $200.

Apple Update

Steve Jobs unveiled five new best things yesterday in his MacWorld keynote.

1. An external HD for wireless network backups.
2. iPhone (free) and iPod touch ($20) software upgrades.
3. Movie rentals from the iTunes store.
4. A free software upgrade for Apple TV.
5. MacBook Air, a new ultra-light, ultra-thin notebook computer.

NewMexiKen bought the touch upgrade. It added mail, stocks (ugh!), maps, notes and weather directly to the touch home screen. All are welcome improvements. I can now move the icons around the home screen, too, and add webclips — icons for web pages (that is, fancy bookmarks). If you have a touch, this upgrade greatly increases it’s internet functionality and makes it much more like the iPhone, less the phone, camera and speaker. I’m still waiting for the second generation phone before I take that plunge (though, I’m happy to announce I am no longer indentured to Verizon).

The MacBook Air compromises some capabilities to obtain it’s slim case. No optical (CD/DVD) drive. Just an 80 GB hard drive (pretty small with any use of videos). A slower chip. The computer however, is small enough to fit in an envelope. That is amazing enough I guess.

Apple TV has become a lot more useful now because it will be able to connect directly to the internet (no need to work through a computer). It seems to me this is still an emerging technology — TV from the net and not from DVDs or TV stations or cable networks — but the Apple TV is tempting. It costs less than what I paid for the 400 disk CD player I still use, yet will hold much more music, all available with the touch of a few remote buttons. Having one’s photo albums available on the TV screen is also a real breakthrough for digital photos I’d say. $229 for 40GB; $329 for 160GB.

Today is Apple Day

Here’s what you will find right now (9:00 am MT) at the online Apple Store.

Apple Store

The online Apple Store is closed for the morning so they can keep all the new goodies secret. Apple CEO Steve Jobs will introduce the new products in his keynote address beginning today at 10:00 MT. Last year it was the iPhone. Two years ago it was the intel chips and iLife. Three years ago the iPod shuffle and Mac Mini. What will it be today?

It’s like Christmas morning for us Apple aficionados.

Where do I buy Apple stock?

Three years ago today Apple introduced the iPod shuffle, the Mac Mini, and iLife and iWork 05. Apple stock closed at $64.56 that day. It later split 2:1. At this writing it is $177.

So $1000 in Apple stock bought three years ago today would be worth $5483. (And the stock has reached $200.)

This year the day for Apple’s big announcements is next Monday.

Update: On the other hand, according to Atrios, “Had you invested $10,000 in [Countrywide 11 months ago], it would now be worth about $1050.00.”

Rabbit-Ear Users Don’t Know The End (of Analog TV) Is Near

“In less than 14 months, any traditional television set still connected to its antenna will receive nothing but static, as the broadcasting industry cuts over completely to its new digital frequencies.”

Bits

Did you know this? Does it matter to you (that is, do you have any analog TVs without cable)?

Google Gets Ready to Rumble With Microsoft

There’s an interesting and lengthy article about the future of computing in today’s New York Times.

The growing confrontation between Google and Microsoft promises to be an epic business battle. It is likely to shape the prosperity and progress of both companies, and also inform how consumers and corporations work, shop, communicate and go about their digital lives. Google sees all of this happening on remote servers in faraway data centers, accessible over the Web by an array of wired and wireless devices — a setup known as cloud computing. Microsoft sees a Web future as well, but one whose center of gravity remains firmly tethered to its desktop PC software. Therein lies the conflict.

Podcasts

NewMexiKen never ceases to be amazed at the amount of free material available at the iTunes store in the form of podcasts — ESPN, NPR, PBS, college courses and lectures, and so on. Today I copied a number of free episodes of old time radio programs for my next road trip. I find the old episodes of “Suspense” and “Gunsmoke” and the like to be fast-paced and easier to listen to than audio books [while driving].

Do any of NewMexiKen’s readers have any favorite podcasts they’d like to recommend?

Readers Answer Some of Pogue’s Imponderables

You may remember a few weeks back when NewMexiKen posted a link to David Pogue’s Imponderables. Well, he’s posted some of the responses: Readers Answer Some of Pogue’s Imponderables. The replies include my own about laptops at takeoff, but others are more fun, especially this:

* Who are the morons who respond to junk-mail offers, thereby keeping spammers in business?

–”That would be my sister.”

–”My mother, O.K.? Now you know.”

–”Statistically speaking, half of ALL people are below-average intelligence. That fact can explain MANY things.”

–”Naive people, like recent immigrants; old people whose adult children just set them up with a computer for the first time; and the truly desperate who’ve already tried other methods of penis enlargement.”

Best line of the day, so far

All the PCs that had melted or seized up or got infected are restored to health and vigor; those who were hurt or maimed by their owners when the goddam things didn’t work like they were supposed to—or didn’t auto-save a critical file before they went kablooey—are made whole and strong again, just as we remember them in our dreams of the day we pulled them out of their styrofoam-packed boxes and said, “We really shoulda gotten a Mac this time.”

Cheers and Jeers: Thursday writing about PC heaven.

Leopard: A beautiful upgrade

Leopard is a legitimately big deal. It’s underhyped compared to iPhone, and yet unlike iPhone, Leopard is a genuine triumph of customer-focused engineering. It’s a pleasure and a relief to see that Apple remembers how to deliver open, affordable, standards-based products. There probably won’t be lines around the block at Apple retail stores for people who can’t wait to get their hands on Leopard. If they had been using Leopard as long as developers have, Apple wouldn’t be able to stamp Leopard DVDs fast enough. Word will get out.

Tom Yager | InfoWorld